The Claimed Priority patents and applications disclose and claim a SYSTEM AND APPARATUS FOR THE RECORDING AND PROJECTION OF IMAGES IN SUBSTANTIALLY 3-DIMENSIONAL FORMAT. The invention described therein derives from the principles of holography and/or integral photography. The Claimed Priority patents and applications first disclose a basic principle of magnification and projection. This principle permits magnification and projection of 3-dimensional images uniformly in all directions, thereby overcoming drawbacks in the prior art. The Claimed Priority patents and applications also disclose that the magnification factor can be less than, greater than, or equal to unity. Based upon this principle of magnification and projection, cameras are described, in their various embodiments, that photograph a scene and retain the 3-dimensional information therein. An editor is also described that would edit integral photographs and holograms containing the 3-dimensional information from the photographed scene. In addition, a theater is designed to project the magnified 3-dimensional scene that was photographed, upon a large screen to be viewed by an audience. Further, the projectors and screens are described in their various embodiments. The viewing audience should not be able to perform any visual test to determine whether or not the projected 3-dimensional scene truly exists.
The Claimed Priority Patents and Applications mostly disclose the application of the principle of magnification and projection to integral photography. Integral photographs (or integral frames) are a collection of two-dimensional elemental images of a three-dimensional scene, each elemental image being representative of the scene from a specific viewing angle. Normally, the elemental images are arranged in a matrix on the frame, and are produced by a matrix lens array having a multiplicity of lenslets such as a fly's eye lens. The matrix lens array has the same number and arrangement of lenslets as the elemental images which they produce. Were the identical matrix lens array to be placed over the illuminated integral frame such that there is a one-to-one correspondence between all of the individual lenslets with the elemental images, a real or virtual three-dimensional image would be reconstructed.
However, three-dimensional images reconstructed from integral photographs are normally pseudoscopic. In other words, objects which should appear closer to a viewer actually appear further away, and vice versa. This would prove annoying to a viewing audience. Therefore it is an object of this invention to convert a pseudoscopic image reconstructed from an integral photograph to an orthoscopic image (i.e., a three-dimensional image that would appear normal to a viewer). This conversion process is called eversion. Eversion turns an image inside-out. An orthoscopic image is everted to form a pseudoscopic image. A pseudoscopic image is everted to form an orthoscopic image. Each eversion is the inverse transformation of the other.